The Phenomenology of Pain is the first book-length investigation of its topic to appear in English. Groundbreaking, systematic, and illuminating, it opens a dialogue between phenomenology and such disciplines as cognitive science and cultural anthropology to argue that science alone cannot clarify the nature of pain experience without incorporating a phenomenological approach. Building on this premise, Saulius Geniusas develops a novel conception of pain grounded in phenomenological principles: pain is an aversive bodily feeling with a distinct experiential quality, which (...) can only be given in original first-hand experience, either as a feeling-sensation or as an emotion. Geniusas crystallizes the fundamental methodological principles that underlie phenomenological research. On the basis of those principles, he offers a phenomenological clarification of the fundamental structures of pain experience and contests the common conflation of phenomenology with introspectionism. Geniusas analyzes numerous pain dissociation syndromes, brings into focus the de-personalizing and re-personalizing nature of chronic pain experience, and demonstrates what role somatization and psychologization play in pain experience. In the process, he advances Husserlian phenomenology in a direction that is not explicitly worked out in Husserl's own writings. (shrink)

This volume is the first book-length analysis of the problematic concept of the ‘horizon’ in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, as well as in phenomenology generally. A recent arrival on the conceptual scene, the horizon still eludes robust definition. The author shows in this authoritative exploration of the topic that Husserl, the originator of phenomenology, placed the notion of the horizon at the centre of philosophical enquiry. He also demonstrates the rightful centrality of the concept of the horizon, all too often viewed (...) as an imprecise metaphor of tangential significance. His systematic analysis deploys both early and late work by Husserl, as well as hitherto unpublished manuscripts. Opening out the question to include that of the origins of the horizon, the book explores the horizon as philosophical theme or notion, as a figure of intentionality, and as a signification of one’s consciousness of the world—our ‘world-horizon’. It argues that the central philosophical significance of the problematic of the horizon makes itself apparent in realizing how this problematic enriches our philosophical understanding of subjectivity. Systematic, thorough, and revealing, this study of the significance of a core concept in phenomenology will be relevant not only to the phenomenological community, but also to anyone interested in the intersections of phenomenology and other philosophical traditions, such as hermeneutics and pragmatism.​. (shrink)

As a phenomenological concept, absorption refers to the ego's capacity to experience the world from a displaced standpoint. The paper traces the emergence and development of this concept in Husserl...

The article discusses the uncertainty of legal definitions of aviation safety and and aviation security, the implementation of which often result in certain restrictions of human rights. In the article, a hypothesis is made that, despite usually treated as well-known concepts, safety and security are not so clear and well-defined, often leaving the reader to guess at their precise meaning. The aim of this article is to identify the core features that characterise aviation safety and aviation security and could disclose (...) their legal content when assessing their comparative weight in relation to the protection of human rights. Supported by holistic approach from different perspectives (socio-cultural, historical, etc.), the phenomenological and hermeneutic analysis allowed providing an in-depth understanding of various meanings of safety and security concepts. An overview of the existing linguistic peculiarities of the use of the terms ‘safety’ and ‘security’ with an emphasis on the importance of determining the context in which they are used as primary evidence of their meaning is followed by the analysis of the common features and differences between the concepts of safety and security that supplements the discourse on the dilemma of combining subjective and objective, relative and absolute perceptions of safety and security. The research from the view point of normative jurisprudence reveals the polysemy inherent in aviation safety and aviation security, especially in terms of the values they represent, suggesting the conclusion that legal definitions of ‘aviation safety’ and ‘aviation security’ should in part be treated as a sort of ad hoc definitions, which have to be developed (clarified) in each particular case. (shrink)

Although James and Schutz provide us with the most insightful investigations of multiple realities that we come across in philosophical, psychological and sociological literature, hardly any critical studies have addressed James’s and Schutz’s conceptions of multiple realities alongside each other. This paper fills this gap. The paper demonstrates that James and Schutz were concerned with the same set of issues in their respective accounts of multiple realities. It further shows the different ways in which James and Schutz understood multiple realities (...) and how they conceptualized the fundamental levels of reality’s constitution. It also provides a critical analysis of Schutz’s allegation that James’s analysis is psychologistic, arguing that this accusation is ungrounded and that Schutz’s epoche of the natural attitude in fact bolsters James’s analysis of belief. The paper concludes with a set of reflections on the heterogenous nature of paramount reality, bringing into question James’s and Schutz’s assumption that each reality is inwardly coherent, although incompatible with each other. (shrink)

This innovative collection traces the heretical development of productive imagination in post-Kantian philosophy. The book offers an original study that comprises unprecedented investigations into the kinaesthetic, pre-linguistic, poetic, historical, artistic, social and political dimensions of the productive power of imagination.

The paper strives to clarify the essential structures of productive imagination using the resources of Husserlian phenomenology. According to my working hypothesis, productive imagination is a relative term, whose meaning derives from its opposition to reproductive imagination. One thus first needs to clarify what makes imagination into a reproductive mode of consciousness, and in this regard, Husserl’s phenomenology proves exceptionally fruitful. My analysis unfolds in four steps. First, I fix the sense in which phantasy is an essentially reproductive mode of (...) consciousness. Secondly, I argue that phantasy cannot be conceived as an ingredient of perceptual consciousness. Thirdly, I show that both memory and phantasy generate patterns of sense, which can subsequently be transcribed into the field of positional experience. Finally, I conclude with a suggestion that the plurality of cultural worlds can be conceived as diverse configurations of sense, which are the constitutive accomplishments of productive imagination. (shrink)

The purpose of this manuscript is to bring Mead's pragmatism into contact with Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology. Taking as its focus the question of the I-pole of the self, the paper points to the absence and the need of a concept like auto-affection in Mead's analysis of selfhood. A pragmatic appropriation of this concept does not undermine the social framework of selfhood because the most rudimentary self-givenness is immediate and direct, yet simultaneously a posteriori. The social and biological genesis of mind, (...) self and society reserves a prominent place for auto-affection, which liberates the self from his estrangement within the horizon of objecthood by acknowledging a multiplicity of types of self-givenness besides that of self-objectification. (shrink)

Husserl is the philosopher who transformed the geological metaphor of sedimentation into a philosophical concept. While tracing the development of Husserl's reflections on sedimentation, I argue that the distinctive feature of Husserl's approach lies in his preoccupation with the question concerning the origins of sedimentations. The paper demonstrates that in different frameworks of analysis, Husserl understood these origins in significantly different ways. In the works concerned with the phenomenology of time consciousness, Husserl searched for the origins of sedimentation in the (...) field of subjective experience, and more precisely, in impressional consciousness. By contrast, in the later works concerned with history, he maintained that the origins of sedimentations lie in the field of historical past that stretches beyond the reach of individual experience. Building on the basis of these resources, I argue that the Husserlian concept of sedimentation has three distinct components of senses: static, genetic, and generative. In the static sense, sedimentations are modifications of retentions and necessary conditions of recollection. In the genetic sense, sedimentations are necessary for the formation of types, habits and moods, and as such, they shape present experiences. In the generative sense, sedimentations refer to what consciousness inherits from the historical tradition. (shrink)

The paper explores the meaning of the phenomenological concept of sedimentation in the framework of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. The analysis I offer suggests that Merleau-Ponty initiates a transition from the constitutional problematic of sedimentations that we come across in Husserl’s phenomenology to the analysis of existential sedimentations. Merleau-Ponty accomplishes this transformation by binding the Husserlian conception of sedimentations with the Heideggerian conception of facticity. The distinction Merleau-Ponty draws between originary sedimentations and secondary sedimentations is especially important, for it allows one to (...) claim that Merleau-Ponty recognizes all experiences as sedimented. Against the background of this realization, I offer a reevaluation of Merleau-Ponty’s cryptic remarks in the Phenomenology of Perception regarding the “original past,” also described as “a past that has never been a present.” I argue that these are metaphors for originary sedimentations. In place of a conclusion, I suggest that especially when the concept of sedimentation is universalized, we come to recognize its inherently paradoxical nature. In the final analysis, besides being a genetic concept, sedimentation is also a limit problem and a limit phenomenon. (shrink)

The following investigation raises the question of indexicality’s phenomenological sense by tracing the development of this problem in Husserl’s phenomenology, starting with its emergence in the first of the Logical Investigations. In contrast to the standard approach, which confines the problem of indexicality to its treatment in the Logical Investigations, I argue against Husserl’s early solution, claiming that, from a specifically phenomenological perspective, the so-called “replaceability thesis” is unwarranted. I further show that Husserl himself unequivocally rejected his early solution in (...) his revisions of the Logical Investigations, although, admittedly, he never replaced his old conception with a new one. Thus, my central task here is that of reconstructing the main contours of Husserl’s new approach to indexicality. Following Husserl’s suggestion that the discovery of the horizon puts phenomenology in the position to actually solve the problem of indexicals, I trace the development of the horizon-intentionality in Husserl’s writings and show how the dynamic structure of the horizon invites the question of the genesis of expressibility. At the beginning of this reconstructive story lies Husserl’s discovery of the noema in Ideas I: this notion, whose discovery goes hand-in-hand with that of the horizon, recasts the problem of indexicals in a new light and brings the realisation that both subjective and objective expressions have the same subjective origins of sense. Yet for Husserl, the horizon is not only the horizon of objects, but also the horizon of the world. In the final analysis, the presence of indexicals in scientific discourse proves to be a faint echo of the life-world from which scientific discourse springs. (shrink)

I argue that imagination has an inherently paradoxical structure: it enables one to flee one’s socio-cultural reality and to constitute one’s socio-cultural world. I maintain that most philosophical accounts of the imagination leave this paradox unexplored. I further contend that Paul Ricoeur is the only thinker to have addressed this paradox explicitly. According to Ricoeur, to resolve this paradox, one needs to recognize language as the origin of productive imagination. This paper explores Ricoeur’s solution by offering a detailed study of (...) reproductive and productive imagination in the framework of poetic imagination. My analysis subjects Ricoeur’s distinction between reproductive and productive imagination to a critique that relies upon the principles of classical phenomenology. According to my central thesis, the imaginative powers of language are themselves rooted in perception. This thesis broadens the scope and significance of Ricoeur’s solution by enabling one to resolve the paradox of imagination not only at the level of language-based imagination, but also at the level of dreams and daydreaming as well as at the level of non-language based art. No less significantly, this thesis enables one to open a fresh dialogue between phenomenology and hermeneutics. (shrink)

The following investigation aims to determine the historical origins of the phenomenology of pain. According to my central thesis, these origins can be traced back to an enthralling discussion between Husserl and two of his most important teachers, Brentano and Stumpf. According to my reconstruction of this discussion, while Brentano defended the view that all feelings, including pain, are intentional experiences, and while Stumpf argued that pain is a non-intentional feeling-sensation, Husserl of the Logical Investigations provides compelling resources to resolve (...) the polemic between his teachers by showing how pain can be conceived as a pre-intentional experience. According to my argument, this largely forgotten discussion is of significance not only because it enriches our understanding of pain, but also because it modifies the phenomenological conception of consciousness. Thus in the concluding section, I show why the Husserlian resolution of the controversy between Brentano and Stumpf is of importance for our understanding of the central phenomenological theme—intentionality. (shrink)

Offering the first book-length study of a central concept in modern European philosophy to appear in the English-speaking world, this book provides an authoritative collection of articles that systematically address the concept of productive imagination in pre-Kantian philosophy, Kant, German Idealism, Phenomenology and Hermeneutics.

In this article the paradoxical role of legal science in legal practice is discussed. On the one hand, legal scientists do not agree on the criterions of the scientific character of legal science. On the other hand, even in the legal cases that are especially complicated it is possible to arrive at theoretically unquestionable decisions. The author of the article concludes that legal practice is based on fundamental theoretical insights; however, in legal practice these insights are used more intuitively than (...) reflectively. Therefore, the aim of the article is to rationally reconstruct these theoretical insights with reference to the ideas of modern schools of legal philosophy. For this purpose the ideas of the theory of natural law are discussed. It is concluded that in legal practice two provisions of natural law are applied: legal decisions ought to be reasonable and must include existential ends (basic values). The evolution of the legal positivism is discussed in the article and it is concluded that legal positivism offers the criterions of the scientific character of legal science by framing the procedural rules of the democratic process of lawmaking. These rules anticipate such conditions: consensus concerning decision making; equal participation of all members of legal discourse confirming normative decisions; the acceptability of consequences after the realisation of normative decisions; the possibility to reaffirm normative decisions, if necessary. The ideas of virtue jurisprudence are discussed and it is claimed that virtue jurisprudence as a criterion of the scientific character of law proposes such theoretical position: the decisions concerning human rights must supply the value system (hierarchy) and the virtues which are formed and justified in the long legal tradition. The article represents the use of these criterions of the scientific character of legal science by Jurgen Habermas to debate about legal prohibition of the improvement of the human genome by using modern technologies of genome engineering in the Convention of Human Rights and Biomedicine (Oviedo, 1997). (shrink)

Although the need of freedom is definite, the concept of individual freedom, while being interpreted with legal terms, causes not only theoretical, but also practical problems. The observed two extremes of freedom are defined as any human self-expression as well as the license, where the state power is generally attributed to disregard personal freedom. In this article the freedom of expression and state enforcement jurisdiction dichotomy are addressed by discussing positive and negative conceptions of freedom and the relationship between the (...) interpretations of political liberalism and Kant and Hegel‘s philosophies. This paper aims to prove that the positive liberty is the assumption of the negative liberty. The paper based on Hegel‘s philosophy shows that freedom is the characteristic of human nature to seek identity. It is also argued that human identity can take many forms and, therefore, a person has a number of inherent rights and liberties. It is human psycho-physical identity that provides the right to life and health care; human creative identity, providing the right to privacy and freedom of occupation; human moral identity, which provides the right of dignity, and the moral autonomy of person’s social and political identity, providing the political and social rights and freedoms. This article concludes that while a person uses the given rights with integrity and the state is limiting people’s arbitrariness, there is no conflict between the freedom and state violation. (shrink)

Este artigo tem como objetivo situar a pesquisa contemporânea sobre a dor e delimitar as diferentes metodologias aplicadas na análise deste tema. O objetivo deste estudo é argumentar contra a posição que defende que o naturalismo e o construtivismo social são os únicos possíveis pontos de partida no campo da pesquisa da dor. Pretende-‑se mostrar que essas duas correntes se baseiam em pressupostos cuja explicação filosófica requer uma fenomenologia da dor. Dado que esses pressupostos dizem respeito ao conceito de dor, (...) tentarei oferecer uma visão crítica de algumas conceções estabelecidas, além de apresentar o que chamarei de definição fenomenológica de dor. (shrink)

The fundamental goal of this paper is to clarify the importance of Husserl’s reflections on destiny (Schicksal) in the context of his post-WWI ethics. In the first section, I sketch Husserl’s reflections on war in his private correspondence. In the second section, I show that, in his post-WWI research manuscripts on ethics, Husserl conceptualized various forms of meaningless suffering under the heading of destiny. One of the main questions of Husserl’s post-WWI ethics can be formulated as follows: in the dark (...) horizon of senselessness, how is an ethical life possible? In the remaining sections, I show that Husserl’s reflections on this question led him to deformalize his earlier ethics and motivated him to ground his ethics of reason in an ethics of love. In the third and fourth sections, I sketch Husserl’s two fundamental answers to this question, the first of which concerns his phenomenology of love, while the second one – his phenomenological metaphysics in general, and his phenomenological teleology, in particular. While for Husserl, these answers are complementary, after clarifying Husserl’s view on the conflicts of values, I conclude with some reflections on the importance of not overlooking that these answers are analytically distinct. (shrink)

This collection of chapters, written by prominent scholars in their respective fields, re-examines the nature of self-awareness in both Western and Eastern philosophy, inquires into its diverse and variable modes, and significantly broadens the framework of its analysis. The chapters collected focus on reflective and pre-reflective forms of self-awareness, as well as the relation between self-awareness and the awareness of things and the world. Included are examinations of the affective and embodied dimensions of self-awareness, the distinct forms of self-awareness in (...) memory, phantasy, and dreams, as well as the temporal and spatial nature of self-awareness. This edited volume appeals to students and researchers working in phenomenology and on the philosophy of self-awareness. (shrink)

My goal is threefold. First, building on the basis of Husserl’s phenomenology of the imagination, I will argue that phantasy is a specific type of intentional experience, which intends its objects as neutralized presentifications. Second, I will turn to dreams and argue that non-lucid dreams are unconscious phantasies, which cannot be conceived in the above-mentioned way. This realization will bring us to the third task. When recognized as the most extreme form of unconscious phantasy, dreams compel us to raise anew (...) the fundamental question: what is the nature of phantasy experience? According to the perspective I will here develop, phantasy is a specific field of experience that lies between two extremes: the fully translucent mode of the as if consciousness and the thoroughly opaque mode of absorption. Most of our phantasies, both conscious and unconscious, voluntary and involuntary, are lived somewhere between these two extremes. (shrink)